"....everyone born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith. Who then overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God." 1 John 5:3-5

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A concerned reader asked if whether the pride of the hell-bound can be humbled enough for them to see their lies and thereby recant?

Why Inflexible Pride Goes Before a Fall

In his Commentary on Psalm 33/2, 8, St. Augustine notes that a dirty house (depraved conscience) is the miserable condition of all whose inflexible pride makes them refuse to face their own conscience lest they be overwhelmed by the wickedness they find there. (Day by Day with Saint Augustine, Donald X. Burt, p. 107)

The narcissistic man or woman is a self-righteous hypocrite, a narcissistic bully of inflexible pride who refuses to tolerate the knowledge of his or her own weaknesses, failings, and sinfulness, thus is constantly engaged in trampling over and bullying other people into submission and sweeping the evidence of their own remarkably consistent sins under the rug of their conscience in order to preserve their carefully constructed public facades. This is why as the saying goes, "pride goes before a fall" because mans' sin nature blinds him (or her) to reality. Thus it can be said that as narcissists of inflexible pride are blind to the repulsive spectacle they make of themselves and foolishly dance on the edge of the abyss they are willfully blind to the disgust of other people and the danger of falling in because they have willfully chosen ignorance.

So the short answer to the readers' question is "no." No man is able to overcome the 'will' ofanother man except through deceptive persuasion, lies, brain-altering drugs, psychological manipulation, propaganda of the lie, terror and brutality, sinister tactics associated with America's progressives/leftists, ISIS, and both Marxist Communists and National Socialists.

In service to our Lord and in compassion for the lost the heaven-bound can take the "water of truth" to them but cannot make them drink it. In "The Word of Flux" reformed theologian Rousas John Rushdoony tells us that the reason for man's willful choice of ignorance rather than true Truth is sin:

"The epistemological problem has roots in a false metaphysics, but both alike stem from a moral choice, man's sinful desire to be his own god....In reality, sin is man's rebellion against the law of God and man's attempt to be his own god, to replace God's Word with man's word." (The Word of Flux, p. 51)

In the "Last Battle," the conclusion to C.S. Lewis' "Narnian Chronicles" Lewis illustrates Rusdoonysconclusion as well as one made previously: that God honors our choices. The Last Battle brings to a close the worldly Narnia which has already been renewed (Paradise) as well as separating the heaven-bound from the hell-bound. Among the hell-bound are some dwarfs (citizens of the temporal Narnia). They have died and passed through the door into eternity where they sit together, huddled in a tight circle, completely blinded by the darkness around them. But though they sit in darkness the heaven-bound Narnians(talking beasts, righteous dwarves) and Kings and Queens of Narnia, past and present, are standing in beautiful light and can clearly see the dwarves. In their concern for the dwarves the heaven-bound have repeatedly tried to reach out to them but to no avail. When Aslan (Jesus Christ) arrives the heaven-bound ask if there is anything he can do. Aslan responds,

"You see....They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that that they cannot be taken out." (p. 183)